Risk and Luck in Medical Ethics

Ethics is commonly assumed to be the one realm in which luck and risk do not intrude. It has been said that a While one can be lucky in onea s business, in onea s married life, and in onea s health, one cannot, so it is commonly assumed, be subject to luck as far as onea s moral worth is concerned.a But although we do not normally hold people responsible for outcomes beyond their control, a serious examination of the role of luck and risk may lead us to conclude that very few outcomes are really within peoplea s control. This is the paradox of a moral lucka . Risk and Luck in Medical Ethics examines the a moral lucka paradox in greater detail, relating it to Kantian, consequentialist, and virtue--based approaches to ethics. Dickenson applies the paradoxes of risk and luck to medical ethics, including timely discussion of risk and luck in the allocation of scarce health care resources, informed consent to treatment, decisions about withholding life--sustaining treatment, psychiatry, reproductive ethics, genetic testing, and medical research and evidence--based medicine. The book concludes with an examination of the relevance of risk and luck in a medical context to the study of global ethics. If risk and luck are taken seriously, it would seem to follow that we cannot develop any definite moral standards at all, that we are doomed to moral relativism. However, Dickenson offers strong counter--arguments to this view that enable us to think in terms of universal standards for judging ethical systems. This claim has direct practical relevance for practitioners as well as philosophers.

ISBN 0745621465   DEWEY edition DC21 ISBN13 9780745621463 (What's this?)   Pages 280 Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd   Volumes 1 Imprint Polity Press   Weight (grammes) 416 Format Paperback   Published in Oxford Publication date 15 Nov 2002   Height (mm) 229 Non-book description x, 269 p. ;   Width (mm) 153 Library of Congress 02003389   Spine width (mm) 21 DEWEY 174.2   Academic level Undergraduate, Professional / Scholarly, Postgraduate

		Preface
1		Ethics versus Luck?		1
2		The Fragility of Virtue and the Robust Health of Kantianism		24
3		Utilitarianism and Luck in Outcomes		46
4		Risk and Consent		65
5		Death and Dying		86
6		Moral Luck and the Allocation of Health Care Resources		104
7		Reproductive Ethics: What Risks Can Women be Asked to Bear?		124
8		Psychiatry and Risk		144
9		Luck, Genetics and Moral Character		167
10		Moral Luck and Global Ethics		187
		Notes		213
		Bibliography		241
		Index		262

"Although risk is widely discussed in the medical ethics literature, luck has been conspicuously absent. This book seeks to fill this void by drawing on the extensive treatments of luck by philosophers and applying them to issues in medicine and health care!the book provides a useful framework for analyzing issues in medical ethics." John R. Williams, The Heythop Journal "Dickensona s book is truly groundbreaking. By viewing issues of applied ethics through the unusual prism of moral luck, she throws an unexpected light on familiar themes in medical ethics, and by bringing the problem of moral luck into relatively unchartered areas, she goes some way in rectifying the neglect into which this important problem has fallen in recent years." Stuart Rennie, Ethical Perspectives

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